Watching Mimes Again

I wore my Baker's Dozen shirt to work on Thursday. The last time I wore it - when I was taking classes at Drake - I got more than a few comments and questions about it, especially since it says

"ROIDS" on the back. But nobody said anything to me at work. Generally I keep to myself and everyone else does the same. Except for one guy.

He saw my shirt. He said, "Hey. Is that like, a baseball shirt?"

"Uh, no," I said. "It's for my mime troupe. They have a show tonight, so I figured..." My sentence trailed off into oblivion.

"Oh," he said. "Right."

But anyway the show was that Thursday. Pretty enjoyable. A great opening and closing - and wow, what a fantastic set. Solid skits, too. All in all a fun time.

This was a little weird for me, though, since this was the last show in which I had any connection to members of the troupe. As of Thursday evening I've got nothing to do with picking the now-current mimes in The Baker's Dozen. I figured this'd make the show a little weird for me, but it actually wasn't as heartbreaking as I'd expected it to be. I've come to view Runway as less of a sad thing and more of a thing to be proud about. Rather than going, "Oh, that's so sad," different words linger in my mind; specifically, those of Thoreau: "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined." Though those words don't make Runway any less sad, they do add a certain pride to the proceedings.

One new thing about Runway that I liked involved the passing on of colors. We used to pass on our colors to other mimes by just telling the new recipient of the color that they were going to get a new one. Like: "Hey. I'm going to pass my color down to you." Not so with this troupe, though. Instead, they actually handed off new ribbons to the younger mimes as they did Runway. A very poignant move if you ask me.

Write About Waiting For Lunch in First Grade

Those words have been on my to do list for about two weeks now. So I figured that I'd better get around to working on that.

First grade was the first year that we had lunch while we were at school. This was such a big deal that we as a class had a miniature orientation session that walked us through the process with what to do when we stood in line for lunch.

The Process.

1. Stand alphabetically in a single file line. (If this is too difficult, remember who's in front of you and who's behind you.) This line will hug the left hand of the hallway leading into the lunch room. On particularly busy days, this line will almost stretch to the gym.
2. When you reach the near front of the line, grab a beverage. Your choices are three varieties of milk. One of them is chocolate. The others don't matter. (On good days there will be juice. Good days are few and far between, though.)
3. When you reach the front of the line, there will be a woman in a sweater and glasses sitting at a table. She has a chunky looking laptop. On her laptop is a database of everyone standing in line. You will say to the woman your name and what sort of lunch you'll have. For example: "Thomas Matysik. Hot lunch." You are not to say anything else to the woman. For the first few weeks you'll say it just like your teacher said it, which was monotone and vaguely militaristic, if not flat out Nazi-esque, but the rules will bend as time goes on.
4. OPTIONAL: If funds are low on your card, the woman will stamp your hand. She'll rub her stamp onto a purple inkpad - the stamp is a picture of a bear holding balloons - and rub the stamp onto your hand. It will hurt a little bit, because she always applies too much pressure onto your hand. She has obviously never had her hand stamped before.
5. You'll grab your food if you have a hot lunch. You'll also grab a cookie, which is always inedible.
6. The salad bar is an option. Like the cookies it's mostly inedible. But pick now or forever hold your peace, because when you
7. sit down, you can't get up to get anything. That's that. So you'll have to raise your hand if you want something like napkins or condiments. If you are Larissa King you will always ask for honey. "MORE HONEY," you will say. You will sound like a gigantic beast. Like you are Winnie The Pooh after being exposed to radiation.
8. When you are done you have to wait for the teacher to dismiss you. Otherwise you're stuck at the table.

Optional step: if you're being particularly loud, the teacher will turn off the lights and yell at you to be quiet. If this happens more than once in a week, you will have a quiet lunch, which is basically what it sounds like.

So there's another thing I can cross off my to do list.

The Try-Not-To-Look-At-The-Clock Game

I got a different job. This one is a lot better than the movie theater, which lasted for all of a day. This one involves calling people to make sure they have jobs so they can get a mortgage on their house. The alternative at the other job I applied for was calling people and letting them know they were going to be kicked out of their house. Needless to say there wasn't a lot of competition between the jobs.

But it's still a job. There's that all-too-often phenomena where the hours and minutes last a little longer than they should. That's why I try to play the don't-look-at-the-clock game. The don't-look-at-the-clock game works the way it sounds. You try not to look at the clock. Usually this makes time go by more quickly. It's that whole "a watched pot never boils" thing. A watched clock never ticks? Something like that.

Chicago Visit

I'm in Chicago writing this post. I'm here for a college visit to Columbia. Apparently I didn't do such a good idea letting people know that I was going to be in Chicago for a bit over spring break. When I told some people about it over the weekend, they went, "Wha?" And then I got a text last night asking if I could do something. Which is difficult, you know, when you're in another city.

The visit to Columbia went okay. The tour itself wasn't terribly exciting. You go on one college tour, you've kinda been on them all. You look at buildings, you get little anecdotes about things that happen in the buildings. The part of the tour that I like is when you talk to somebody in admissions about the nitty gritty. Prices, credits, professors. That kind of thing. That part went okay, but we had to special request to do that part, which is pretty average as far as college visits go. I could see myself going there for screenwriting. I'm still going to give Iowa a looksee though; though Columbia is cheaper than Shimer was, Iowa would be far cheaper than both. And who knows? Maybe I'll be so satisfied with their film curriculum that I want to go to there over Columbia.

But one of the things drawing me to Chicago is the people here. I visited Shimer yesterday evening, which was super wistful. Don't get me wrong; I think I made a good decision leaving there, but I really miss the people there. We sat around and basically chatted about nothing in particular. I'd missed that. There are people I know and care about in Iowa City, don't get me wrong, but I feel like I have a better established support network in Chicago than there. No offence, Iowa City reader.

The surprising thing about the visit was that my sister visited Roosevelt - and loved it. She wasn't terribly thrilled about the visit to begin with, but when she took the tour, she was thrilled. She's kind of nervous about being thrilled, though; she's never seen herself as living in Chicago. It'd be cool, though, if we both ended up there. (Or here, since I'm writing this from a bed in a hotel in Chicago.)

We're going to see a Second City mainstage show tonight. I've never seen a mainstage show. I somehow keep forgetting about it but at the same time I'm really excited about it.

Finally I saw a sign. It said that there are fines for not picking up after your dog that range from $50 to $500. How do they determine the price, I wondered. By if you're a repeat offender? By the size of the dog? By the size of the poo? I bet it's the last one. There's a department somewhere in Chicago devoted entirely to measuring dog poo. "Oh, that's a $250. This? This is a tough one. I think $325. Oh goodness, look at this one. We definitely got a $500 here."

Der Humpink

So not long ago I linked to an awesome thing thanks to Boing Boing. The editor that posted it, Mark Frauenfelder, explained that nothing he could say would make the video any better. That's basically all that can be said about the video.

Barely a week later and the video's gone semi-mainstream. Proof? Cristoph Waltz, the lead bad guy in Inglorious Basterds (who got a Best Supporting Actor statue for his performance) in this video ought to explain better than my words can. Fast forward about a minute and ten seconds in.

From the Sidebar

Usually once something goes in the sidebar I don't acknowledge it here in the main part of the blog; that would be a little redundant if I did. But every now and then something I come across is so awesome that I have to share it here.

This awesome thing in question is a song from the Soviet Union circa 1976.

Fiction #2

When I was at the restaurant once this man came up to me. He was fiftysomething. His hair was working on separating and crawling off either side of his head.

"Are you the manager of the place?" he said.

I told him I was.

"You've gotta do something about the bathroom door stall. It won't lock so it flings wide open. And frankly I don't appreciate pooping for a captive audience." And before I could say anything else to him he stormed off.

I got around to getting the stall fixed a couple of days later. I can only assume I've since disappointed hundreds of poop-hopeful audience members.